


Homesick

by thedevilchicken



Category: Good Will Hunting (1997)
Genre: Angst, Explicit Sexual Content, First Time, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-08
Updated: 2005-12-08
Packaged: 2018-09-27 19:19:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10041059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: After eighteen months and three thousand miles, Chuckie went out to LA for Christmas.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to LiveJournal on 8 December 2005.

After eighteen months and three thousand miles, he went out to LA for Christmas. 

Will had moved and Chuckie had stayed in Boston 'cause jeez, what the fuck else was he meant to do? But he went out to California for Christmas that year. It seemed like a good idea at the time. 

Will bought the ticket; it'd really had to be that way or Chuckie would've just spent the holidays getting bombed out of his tree with the guys just like he had at Thanksgiving, like he had on his birthday, Morgan's, Billy's, like he did every fucking weekend, but the ticket came in the mail one morning, an envelope covered up in Will's shitty handwriting, and Chuckie knew he didn't know how to protest. He knew better than to try it, truth be told; Will would've shot down his complaints in a great ball of flames and then twisted the logic of it all around until Chuckie wasn't sure which way was up, let alone which was was home, so he just looked at it like he was doing him some kind of a favor by going out there. As long as he told himself he hadn't asked for it, that Will wanted it more than he did, it was absolutely fucking fine to accept. Besides, the cheapskate stuck him in fucking _coach_. And hell, obviously, Chuckie would pay him back if it was the last thing he did. He just didn't have to tell Will that. 

He'd never flown before and he was fucking petrified, clasped the armrest with one hand through half the fucking flight as he tried not to stare out of the window at an endless expanse of cloud that just seemed unfathomably _wrong_ seen from that side of it. He drank a bit too much, made a pass at the flight attendant (the story he told later made it seem only slightly less of a glaring fucking trainwreck than it actually was in reality, probably 'cause it hadn't been so long by then that Will wouldn't've seen right through the lie), and had a conversation with an old guy in a battered Red Sox jacket, pointedly _not_ about the Sox. The guy had a daughter and two grandkids out west in San Francisco, he said, hadn't seen them in six years and Chuckie sat there with a small frown pinching at his face that he couldn't shake as the guy shelled out for his next vodka and they drank up with a toast he'd forgotten by the time they landed. Something about the guy and that conversation bothered him and it wasn't the liquor, but who the fuck knew what it was.

He caught a cab at the airport - that was really all he could do 'cause he hadn't called to confirm and actually, Will hadn't asked him to. He gave the driver the address he'd copied from the front of the envelope with a vague sort of back-of-his-mind finger-crossing that it wasn't the address for his office or he'd be pretty much fucked, considering how he could barely make payments on his mom's new couch, let alone a lousy hotel room out in LA. And he chatted with the cab driver the whole way there, his mouth on its usual easy autopilot as he stared out of the window at what was maybe the third city he'd ever seen and then only 'cause of a fucking awful lost game at Yankee Stadium that had coincided with his New York-dwelling cousin's engagement party. It was sunset then, more or less, and he rendered himself half-blind staring into the sun and trying not to sound bizarrely fucking jittery, like the cabbie's opinion of him and his situation actually fucking mattered. It didn't, but he didn't want to think he was somehow scared to see Will. He didn't want to think he was nervous.

And then he was there, sitting in the back of the cab in the dying light outside of a smallish house on a street in suburbia where all the cars looked like carbon copies in only fractionally varying colours; hell, the houses themselves looked that same way, too, in their ridiculous sort of pseudo-Spanish assemble-by-numbers Lego-set style, and none of it looked like Will. It didn't look a whole lot like Chuckie, either; he paid the fare with a curse and a scowl at his emptying wallet and he stood there at the kerb in his worn jeans and battered old work boots, glancing up and down the street at the women in their twinsets and pearls with their 2.4 kids and their sensible family vehicles and he honestly had no fucking words for once. He just walked up the driveway, shouldering his frayed old bag and frowning at the brand new Lexus he passed on the way. A fucking _Lexus_ , for Christ's sake. 

He knocked on the door and found himself hoping to fucking God this wasn't some kind of a twisted joke. It wasn't. Or maybe it was 'cause thirty seconds later, Will was at the door in a crumpled suit, pulling at his tie as he gave Chuckie an odd, kinda hesitant grin. 

"So, you came," was his startlingly superfluous opener. 

"Way to state the fucking obvious, genius," was Chuckie's overly-smartassed reply, though his tone wasn't cheerful enough to pull it off without it sounding kinda like a complaint.

And they stood there a moment on the doorstep, the silence sort of heavy between them in a way it had never really been before as Chuckie passed his bag from one hand to the other and didn't try to hide how he was eying the house with a mild sort of incredulity. 

"You coming in?" Will asked, in the end, probably because he couldn't think of much else to say besides that. Chuckie tried to smile in response - wasn't sure if he succeeded - and he nodded, he followed him in, he stood there on the tiled floor he knew was painfully way too upmarket for his ancient boots. There were bookshelves all over the place, all around, in every room, piled high, fucking overflowing; there was a coffee table in the lounge with a huge stack of papers and files and empty beer bottles, a pizza box. But little below the surface of it was actually Will. Fuck, _Will_ clearly wasn't actually Will. 

"Nice place," Chuckie said, putting down his bag in the hall. His enthusiasm sounded as forced as it felt.

Will nodded. "Yeah," he said. "Skylar decorated."

And Chuckie nodded back. He didn't need to be a fucking genius to see that she'd left; it was in the clutter, the litter, the way the couch cushions refused to line up the way they should have. It was in the takeout menus scattered over a counter in the kitchen that was half-covered in spent cigarette ash, the way Will offered him a coffee after the Grand Tour was over and stirred in the sugar with a steak knife. And that _was_ Will. Chuckie almost started to wonder if anything had changed apart from the location, the time. He _almost_ started to wonder. 'Cause, of course, it had. 

They sat at the kitchen table after that, talked awhile, caught up. Will fucking hated his job, knew it was kinda pointless, was feeling out the local headhunters to find something with better hours that didn't require the tie on a daily basis and maybe did something to interest him in some small way instead of boring him to tears with alarming regularity. Chuckie was still working construction then. Will was just renting the house, letting the lease run out before moving into the city and away from eighteen months' worth of memories of Skylar. Chuckie was still living with his mom.

"Not for long, right?" Will said to that, almost nonchalant about it, almost offhand, and Chuckie just smiled and asked if he had any beer. Of course there was beer.

Will kissed him that night, later, when they were both half drunk. It wasn't exactly unexpected though it'd never happened before - there were just things that Chuckie understood that Will never had, that he probably never would, a fucking weird level of intuition he had when it came to his friend that let him turn to Will and see past the façade of Best Friend to that other layer of Something Else beneath. So he let him do it, didn't push him away and maybe leaned into it a little, definitely sucked on his own bottom lip as Will pulled away. He nodded as Will apologised, completely understanding. He let Will move away from it, let him set it aside like it had never happened as they sat on the couch and watched bad sitcoms and sports news until 2am, retelling all the old stories with a beer in their hands and smiles on their faces that weren't quite forced, filling each other in on the new ones. Then he crawled into bed in the guest room and he wondered what the fuck he was doing there. 

The morning conversation, Chuckie standing there against a kitchen counter in his boxers and Will's robe with a coffee in his hand, Will in the pants of a pair of pajamas that didn't suit him and not a lot besides, started out with _...about last night..._ and ended in another kiss as Chuckie put down his mug and almost missed the counter. Will's bare skin was warm and still lined here and there from his twisted-up sheets under Chuckie's hands and his mouth tasted of a weird mix of too-strong coffee and near-fizzy bicarb toothpaste, but that was okay, that wasn't unexpected. Chuckie had his hands in Will's hair before he knew it and when they came up for air, when Will apologised again without actually pulling back, Chuckie just tightened his fingers and tugged and raised his eyebrows. Will was only startled for a moment, then he grinned, then he shook his head and called him an asshole. They kissed again and Chuckie didn't say no. _No_ just didn't seem to matter all that much.

They fucked, of course - not that day but the next, the afternoon of Christmas Eve. Will cracked wise as long as he could while Chuckie smiled a sort of wry, not-quite-long-suffering smile and kissed the head of his cock, teased at it with the tip of his tongue, and he totally didn't wonder if it was the first time for Will since Skylar. It probably was. And they fucked face to face after that, half a step from flat-out awkward, stretched out on the bed in Will's room on top of the crumpled sheets. Will bit down on his lip as his hands slipped on Chuckie's sweat-slicked forearms and Chuckie pushed into him, slowly, holding himself by the root of his cock until he was in him, breathless, as far as he could go. Will met his eyes from time to time as they moved together, as Will strained tight around him, not for long but long enough. Chuckie came in him in gasping, stuttering bursts, inside a lubed-up condom two months from its expiry that was only the third out of a box of ten and even after they were finished, a wad of tissues in his hand to wipe the hot splash of Will's come off of his belly, Chuckie didn't ask where the other two had gone. He didn't ask when. He wasn't sure he wanted to know.

It was good, Chuckie thought, when he pulled on his jeans and went back to the guest room. It was better the second time, at little later, still no less awkward the third time but it was somehow even better again, maybe something to do with practice but then again maybe not. Chuckie ran the shower while he threw up in the john sometime past midnight. He understood perfectly that they shouldn't be doing it, but after that he tried to put it out of his mind. Will didn't wake, or at least he didn't hear him. _Small mercies_ , he thought, and he went to bed to try to sleep.

There were smiles on Christmas day, a disastrous attempt at cooking that ended in a hastily-extinguished pan fire and subsequent tuna mayo sandwiches in front of the TV, a gift exchange that made no sense 'cause Will didn't need a new Sox sweater and Chuckie hadn't actually worn a tracksuit in eight months, since some Harvard girl up in Cambridge who'd reminded him of Skylar - if only in looks - had pointed out that he looked a fucking ass in them. They had a few beers, Will rode him on the couch like it was completely fucking natural and they wound up in bed by nine. Will sucked him off and he watched him do it, Will's lips around his cock, his tongue teasing the tip, face flushed, breathless. Will fucked him and Chuckie came with a shout, voice breaking like it always did, one leg wrapped around Will's waist. He found it strangely amusing as they lay there after, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, that he'd used more condoms in four days with his ex-best friend than he had in all the time he'd been gone. When he told Will what was so fucking amusing, he left out the _ex_. He fell asleep with it still lodged somewhere in his throat, feeling damn near fit to choke on it. 

It was a strange sort of rhythm they fell into in the days after that, the same as it'd always been and yet completely different at precisely the same time, the feel of it changed all around, like the possessive squeeze of Will's fingers round his wrist, like Will's cock pressed to the crack of his ass as they showered. They drank and they watched TV, talked some, went out for burgers, laughed and kissed and even found some batting cages one night and swung away like idiots for more than an hour. Will took him sightseeing on the sixth day 'cause apparently it seemed important; Chuckie wondered later if that meant Will knew what was going to happen even before he did, but he dismissed the idea pretty quickly. Will didn't have a clue. For all his smarts, Will just couldn't see that this just couldn't work.

He always refused to call himself dumb though it really wasn't from conceit or any real sense that he was better than he seemed; it was because he really _wasn't_ dumb, just kind of average, especially when compared with Will. He was an average white American male in his early twenties, with average hangups and average finances and nowhere to go in life but straight the fuck on in a line that began and ended back in Southie, no matter what minor detours he might've taken along the way. He'd never been like Will. 

And no matter what Will may or may not have thought, California just wasn't a place Chuckie could stay for long - he didn't belong there, couldn't ship out of Boston and leave it all behind for some fantasy of a better life the way Will had 'cause that was all it would've been for him: a fantasy. He'd've found some job working demo or maybe construction and he'd've been That Guy From Boston, maybe he'd've made a few friends but when he'd've brought them home there'd've been Will in his fucking suit and a real nice place where a guy like Chuckie didn't fit at all. Or maybe Will knew a guy who knew a guy who could've fixed him up with some cushy desk job with a water cooler and named parking and a fucking necktie and that wouldn't've been right, either. Chuckie barely finished high school and he was not going back to that shit now. He knew his place. Will should've known better than to think it could work. 

He was sitting in a cab and heading back to the airport before he knew it and he didn't say goodbye. Leaving that way wasn't meant to be some kind of a grand statement - he just couldn't come up with the words to say he was sorry he was only the same as he ever had been and he didn't know how to be more than that. He couldn't say that he couldn't be Will's back-up plan, his security blanket, a piece of home. That new veneer over their broken friendship was just a kind of wounded desperation, after all. There'd been a divergence. The two of them playing lovers was a fucking joke. 

So, he left without a letter and he told himself it wasn't guilt he felt. Will wouldn't understand in the end; he'd see another abandonment, maybe he'd get trashed and fuck up some guy outside a bar but there'd always be someone to bail him out, it just wouldn't be Chuckie 'cause he was on his way home. And Will would be really fucking pissed, but he'd get over it. Chuckie knew he'd never see him again. 

He was on the plane headed back to Logan by the time it really occurred to him, when the penny dropped and the unease he'd felt almost every fucking second he'd been there with Will started to make a kind of sudden, aching sense. He was thinking of that guy, the old guy he'd met on the plane on the way over there, the guy in the Sox jacket with the two grandkids living out in San Francisco. Chuckie ordered a vodka and he thought about it, flipping idly through some motor magazine he'd picked up at a stand back in LAX, vaguely aware that he really needed glasses but he'd probably just quit reading instead in that depressing way he knew his dad had and Will would've chewed him the fuck out for. And then he got it. 

He'd thought it was because he couldn't imagine six years going by without seeing Will, thought six years with three thousand miles and a whole fucking country between them was a fucking gutting chunk of space and time that he could barely even imagine, and that he wished he hadn't tried to. The truth was worse and somehow better, somehow hollowing, somehow harrowing, 'cause as it turned out, it was more because it should've _been_ six years and not just those eighteen months. He should've left it six years before he'd gone. Or more. Or never. Maybe never. Probably never. He shouldn't've gone there at all. 

He'd told himself he'd head out there and say goodbye and he'd fucked up and left without. He should've never gone. He should've never opened that damn envelope in the first place, should've sent it back or should've filed it in the back of his closet with all of the photos and the years of programs he'd kept from games at Fenway. No one had ever accused him of being the genius of the pair, but he really should've known.

Back home, finally, he tucked the envelope into the closet, then he closed the lid on the box that he shoved back under a heap of old jeans and and baseball caps he hadn't worn in years. He gave a wry smile, went back down to the guys drinking in the dining room, put his feet up on the chair that'd been empty those last eighteen months, and he picked up his beer. And he told himself it was a bad fucking idea to wind up falling-down drunk when he had work in the morning but knew he'd do it anyway 'cause really, forgetting for a while seemed infinitely preferable to the alternative. 

He missed him. He knew he always would but knew he should've stayed the fuck away. They'd both gotten it wrong. 

It was a one-way ticket Will sent. And Chuckie paid his own way home.


End file.
